Both catalysts of Canada's old age pension plan, J.S. Woodsworth and Abraham Heaps, participated in the Winnipeg General Strike. It is possible to see the strike as being indirectly responsible for bringing both men into the House of Commons.

In 1919, inflation was making troubling inroads on the average worker's buying power. On May 1, Winnipeg's metalworking and building unions went on strike to defend their right to collective bargaining, and to seek better wages and working conditions. Negotiations between the workers and management were unsuccessful. On May 15, about 30,000 workers, including policemen, firemen, telephone and telegraph operators, deliverymen, and retail clerks joined the tradesmen-even though only 12,000 of Winnipeg's workers belonged to a union. (Dozens of sympathetic strikes also sprung up across the country, from Vancouver Island to Nova Scotia.) The strike organizers set up a general strike committee, whose task it was to regulate the strike and ensure that essential services continued.

Business and government officials saw this committee as usurping their own power and created the Citizens' Committee of One Thousand to maintain public utilities. In Ottawa, the government responded to the situation by quickly passing legislation that turned free speech into sedition and made it possible to deport immigrants without trial.

Woodsworth, on the other hand, wrote in the striker's paper on June 12, "Thousands have suffered through the years under the industrial system. The general public… blamed the strikers. Why not blame the employers, whose arrogant determination has provoked the strike? Why not, rather, quit the unprofitable business of trying to place the blame and attempt to discover and remove causes that have produced the strike."

Early in the morning of June 17, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested 10 strike leaders, including Heaps. On June 21, a protest march against the RCMP action turned violent-accounts differ as to what started the difficulties. The RCMP shot one man dead and injured many others. Woodsworth wrote against what he saw as the dictatorial actions of the authorities, and was also arrested.

In the meantime, the events of "Bloody Saturday" had dispersed Winnipeg's workers and the city came under military control. On June 26 the strike committee called off the strike, without the metal or building workers having gained their objectives.

On the one hand, the failure of the Winnipeg general strike severely weakened Canada's labour movement. Canadian business leaders took advantage of their opponent's fall to initiate a strong anti-labour campaign that had the backing of government troops and police. Labour organizers found themselves fired and blacklisted, and strikes were put down by large contingents of strike-breakers. Union membership dropped significantly in the 1920s. On the other hand, the strike sparked a new self-awareness and political involvement among Canadian working people. In the years following the strike, labour leaders were elected to all levels of government, including Abraham Heaps and J.S. Woodsworth.